Aberlink CMM Provides Pace and Precision to Meridian

Based in Littlehampton, West Sussex, Meridian Medical Limited specialise in sterile and non-sterile medical device design, development and manufacture. The company also supply high quality production tooling for customer projects.

Given the nature of Meridian Medical's products and the sectors it serves, the company guarantee regulatory compliance to its clients. Manufactured products are tested and inspected to ensure that only the highest quality products are released for use. To help ensure compliance, all company test equipment is calibrated and traceable to national and international standards.

Meridian Medical's QA department, which remains completely independent of the company's production and design departments, sets standard, end-to-end QA/QC procedures relating to all company activities, for instance, purchasing, production, assembly, packing and shipment.

The business's highly developed quality culture can be illustrated by the recent purchase of an advanced Axiom too Coordinate Measuring Machine from Aberlink.

Meridian Medical Limited, Managing Director, James Fenton explained. "Meridian Medical Limited has earned an enviable reputation for our design consultancy services and for our advanced manufacturing provision. We supply high-quality cost-effective disposable medical device services together with comprehensive sterilisation services and logistics. We are registered to ISO 9001:2008, ISO 3485:2003 and FDA 21CFR 820, and quality and reliability are designed and built into every device we produce.

"Although we have a wide range of specialised test and measurement equipment, increased volumes passing through our busy QA department recently prompted us to search for a suitably accurate, universal dimensional measuring device that had both ease of use and speed of operation. Having considered other options, influenced by a very successful demonstration and by several recommendations from local Aberlink users, we decided to buy the CNC version of Aberlink's Axiom too Coordinate Measuring Machine.

"Now fully operational, not only has our new Aberlink CMM removed the potential for hold-ups in our QA department, the machine's CNC nature and its ability to perform rapid, automated inspection routines, means that it will be able to handle all anticipated future demands.

"Our Axiom too is now busy measuring first-off and last-off components and also undertaking work such as inspecting a given percentage of each manufactured batch, as dictated by our customers. As traceability is vital within the medical industry, it helps that our new CMM is able to generate detailed reports relating to the critical dimensions of each inspected component.

"Given the generous size of the Axiom too's bed and the CMM's fully automatic CNC capabilities, we have plans to further exploit the machine's advanced capabilities. As the majority of the components that we measure are relatively small, we intend to invest in fixtures that will accept large batches of components that require 100% inspection. In future, having loaded a fixture with parts and recalled the relevant program, the press of a button will then start a fully automated, un-manned measuring routine. On completion of each batch, the generated inspection reports will indicate the status of each inspected component."